Buying a New Camera? Flickr Can Help You Pick the Right One

The Flickr Camera Finder homepage tells you which cameras are most popular among its users and provides links to camera-specific image galleries.

If you like photos, you can get lost for hours on Flickr. If you’re looking to buy a new camera, getting lost on Flickr might be a good idea.

You may not know about Flickr Camera Finder, but it’s an amazing feature that uses the “Exif” data from all images uploaded to the service and creates analytical tools based on that information.

For example, the main page of Flickr Camera Finder displays a few graphs: One lists the most frequently used devices for shooting and uploading to the service (one of the iPhones is perpetually in the lead). Another lists the most frequently used smartphones on Flickr (again, the iPhone dominates). Finally, one lists the most frequently used standalone cameras on Flickr.

Those charts and graphs are interesting, but there are more useful tools lurking in the Camera Finder stacks. If you click on one of the linked camera names on the Camera Finder page, it’ll launch a gallery of photos taken with that camera by different users. That’s where the fun (and usefulness) begins — particularly if you’re looking to buy a new camera.

At the bottom of each gallery page you can fine-tune your results based on what you’d like to shoot with your camera. For example, typing “low light,” “macro,” or “action” into the search box will bring up relevant results for that camera. You can compare and contrast results between cameras by having a couple of windows open and looking at them side-by-side. This is one of the best ways to really see the difference between a smartphone camera, a DSLR, and everything in between.

Diving into the data on Flickr will also help you select lenses for DSLRs and mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras, too. Once you’re viewing an individual image that catches your eye, click on the “…” icon in the top right corner of the image page and select “View Exif info.” On the next page, you’ll see which lens was used for the shot, the photographer’s aperture setting, the ISO setting, the focal length, and more.

By clicking the ellipses on each image page and selecting “View Exif info,” you can see which lenses and manual settings were used for each shot.

It all adds up to a great crowdsourced tool that goes far beyond what you’ll find in editorial reviews. You should still read those editorial reviews, but the Camera Finder’s wealth of constantly updated data provides a useful look at what people can do with these cameras and lenses in the real world.